Max Richter - Nosedive

I've been trying to stop buying so many of Max Richter's soundtracks, not because they're not nice - they almost always are - but more because he releases them at such a pace I can't keep up (not just in effort, but also financially). However, this one was an immediate purchase.

Max Richter provided the soundtrack to the first episode of the third season of Black Mirror, a show I'd been watching from the start (having been a fan of Charlie Brooker's work for many years). The third series saw the show move from Channel 4 to Netflix, and with that came a huge increase in production values, and that first episode, Nosedive, was possibly the peak of that - Bryce Dallas Howard as the lead and Max Richter providing the soundtrack. If anything, I think the effect of all that gloss was a huge part of the plot - the shiny, perfect, Instagram-styled existence at the start had to be so, such that the fall the story brought felt even more dramatic. It was a great episode, and the soundtrack definitely added to that. I remember hoping it'd get pressed on vinyl, because I really enjoyed the pieces as the time.

In fact, I think it remains the only Max Richter soundtrack I own where I've actually seen the film it was written for, although that should be seen as more a reflection of how much television I get the time to watch these days (very little), which was another reason to buy it. As with a lot of soundtracks, there are few things you could call "songs" - over the 25-minutes, there's the 7-minute opener On Reflection which sets the scene at the start perfectly, the 4-minute The Journey, Not the Destination relying on some fast-paced electronics to soundtrack the demise, and the 5-minute The Consolation of Philosophy echoing the opener in a reflective way. The other four pieces are around the 2-minute mark and, whilst vital to feel of the episode, not very exciting as an album. But those three main pieces are all excellent, and not only do they provide a great example of what Max Richter does so well (merge classical music with electronics in very emotive ways), they also soundtrack the story arc brilliantly. If the three ran consecutively as one song, you could draw easy parallels between the structure of the song to early-Mogwai or Godspeed songs; I think that's the appeal of Max Richter's music to me - it's basically post-rock but played on entirely different instruments.

A strange note to end on, but I was very surprised when Max Richter's soundtrack to Nosedive wasn't the musical highlight of the series, however I'll save that for another time.

Format: 12", picture sleeve

Tracks: 7

Cost: £17 new

Bought: Bear Tree Records website

When: 09/04/18

Colour: Black

Etching: None

mp3s: Download code

Deftones - Adrenaline

This is where it all began - the first Deftones record I heard. You can't ask for a better introduction than that chugging riff on Bored, the way it changes down perfectly for the chorus, and Chino's screams of the simple sentiment "I get bored". I've sung this song to myself a million times and I can hold that note a fraction of the the amount of time Chino can.

I've told this story a bunch of times before, so I'll keep it short: when my sister and I were just getting into music, we'd been on holiday with my parents to America and discovered the wonder of cheap music and a favourable exchange rate. She bought six cds, all of which I eventually bought from her - three Silverchair albums, two Marilyn Manson albums and Adrenaline by Deftones. She was big into Manson at the time, and one of her friends had got her into Silverchair, particularly Neon Ballroom. Quite how Deftones fit into this I don't know - possibly she'd heard one of the two big singles from Around the Fur. For whatever reason she bought Adrenaline, and at some point in the trip, I popped the cd into her Walkman and gave it a listen. Like I said, what an introduction I had. I can remember it quite lividly; it was an important moment.

That was just over 20 years ago, but it was the beginning of a lot of things. The following summer Deftones released White Pony and I rushed out to buy a copy the day it came out (I'd pre-ordered the limited edition with the bonus track). I've bought every Deftones album the week it's come out since and I suspect I'll continue to do so as long as they put them out.

You can't fault Adrenaline as a debut album. As a band they upped their game a huge amount for Around the Fur in terms of writing huge singles, and then White Pony was just another level entirely. Remove those comparison points and you still have a great album - Bored, Lifter (with it's outro of "A part of me gets sick / A part of me gets sore"), every single moment of 7 Words (the first time I saw Deftones they broke into Weezer's Say it Ain't So in the break, which was brilliant), Birthmark and the closing duo of Fireal / Fist are all incredible. Fist was particularly exciting because it was so far from the sound they'd established over the previous 40 minutes - almost post-rock - but is criminally missing from the vinyl pressing.

Right now I'm playing this to my three-week-old daughter (her third album so far). I'm not convinced she's getting as much from it as I did on that first listen, but she's much younger than I was when I first heard it.

Format: 12", insert (not photographed)
Tracks: 11
Cost: £13 new
Bought: Bear Tree Records website
When: 09/04/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none